You can get some mighty fine natural soy candles in wonderfully inventive scents from Henry & Co. But you can’t get one like this. This scent was mixed exclusively for MFH. It is not for sale.

MFH was honored with her own scent because she volunteered in the chandlery on a weekend when the chandlers had to produce too many candles in too little time.

Do you think MFH might volunteer again, or otherwise support the three women entrepreneurs of Henry & Co.?

Yeah, I think so too.

In a similar vein, a client of mine is sending all its senior people out once a week to visit high-volume customers. The company is in the healthcare field, but few of those who are visiting healthcare providers are themselves healthcare professionals. The medical director is going out, but so are the directors of finance, HR, patient services, and so on. Maybe they can’t talk shop with the doctors they visit, but that’s not the point. The point is, they’re directors. My client is demonstrating to its clients that they matter – a lot.

Look at the messages these two companies – a 3-person startup and a healthcare behemoth – are sending:

• We know who you are.
• We like you. We really, really like you!

Contrast this with the salutation of an e-mail a friend forwarded the other day just as I was writing this e-letter:

Dear NAME

No, I haven’t left out my friend’s name to protect her anonymity. NAME is right there where Billie should have been.

The sender’s heart was in the right place, perhaps, but where was the brain? Meaning to personalize an e-mail without actually doing so doesn’t show potential customers how desperately you want to work with them.

My personal pet peeve is solicitation letters that begin “Dear Friend” when they come from an organization to which I’ve already donated. Again, I give no additional points for “Dear valued donor.” “Dear Jan” would go much further toward convincing me that I really am valued.

Big donors? Maybe they should get a personal handwritten note from the executive director or director of development. It’s a quaint idea, I know, but two handwritten sentences will go farther to communicate gratitude than will the whole two pages of your boilerplate thank-you letter.

In direct mail, personalization costs money. In email, personalization is free except for the time it takes to ensure that your list has names attached to email addresses. So what’s the excuse for not including the recipient’s name? I frankly can’t think of one.

Bottom line: the best way to let your donors or customers know that you value them is not to tell them that you value them but to treat each of them individually.  That begins, at a minimum, with using their names when you communicate with them.

Of course it’s better yet to give them their very own candle scent in a monogrammed jar or write them a personal note.

Stop right now and think about your most valuable customers or clients or donors or volunteers.

I mean it. Stop. What organizations or people are vital to your success?

Now: For you and your organization, what is the equivalent of giving them their own personalized candle scent in a monogrammed jar?

Next: Do it. The gratitude you show will come rippling back to you, and you will have made a lifelong friend.